Familiarity
by Azaria Stromsis
Summary: It is a little known fact that Korra learned to bend fire before water.


**Title: **Familiarity

**Character(s): **Korra, mentions of Tonraq, Senna, Katara, and Mako

**Summary:** It is a little known fact that Korra learned to bend fire before water. **  
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**Words:** 1,145**  
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_Disclaimer: I do not own _Legend of Korra _or any other _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ related works. _

_Thought I'd try my hand at a _Legend of Korra_ fanfic. I'm fairly pleased with this, considering I spent about thirty minutes on it. I haven't seen many Korra introspective pieces, which are some of my favorite kinds of stories, so I thought I'd help fill out the empty space. I have a feeling that I'm really going to like Korra; she seems like my kind of girl. I hope you like, and any and all reviews, including critiques, are appreciated. Enjoy. _

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Familiarity 

It is a little known fact that Korra learned to bend fire before water.

She was born with the same innate knowledge that all waterbenders held at birth, the innate knowledge that allowed them to feel every drop of water in their vicinity. She grew up feeling the constant press of water around her, below her, above her, everywhere around her.

But she wasn't allowed to touch it.

She wasn't allowed outside. She wasn't allowed to play in the snow, in the water. She was kept indoors for a majority of her first year of life, and the only snow that was close to her in her home was either compacted into frozen bricks that she couldn't touch or they were the floor. She didn't have the skill or, quite frankly, the knowledge to pull the water out of the air. She knew it was there, but she couldn't touch it and bend it and mold into something more than what it was. So she had the knowledge and the press of water all around her but her days were usually spent sitting in front of the roaring fire on a pallet of warm animal skins. Her mother rocked her to sleep with those stories, of her lying on her back and playing with her little wooden teething rings, giggling at anything and everything. She, apparently, was a friendly, curious child.

It was not uncommon that her parents would find her asleep out in the main living quarters of their house, the fire hot on her face and chubby baby hands, filling her up to the brim with a kind of slow-growing warmth that eventually invaded her being.

For, while she had been born with the innate knowledge of water, she was also born screaming from her mother's womb with a ball of fire in her chest. She didn't know what it was, was too young to even identify it, but she didn't care because she knew it was there and she knew it belonged there. It was one of her first feelings of comfort that she gained from the world.

For the longest time, something inside of Korra smoldered. It wasn't heat. It was warmth. It was a good, bubbling, filling her chest to the brim and overflowing into her fingers and toes kind of warmth. It was safety.

Korra doesn't remember much of her childhood (though she knows that she played with Naga a lot whenever she could, which was whenever she wasn't training, usually when she was supposed to be sleeping) but she remembers one thing clearly, above all else.

Even though she was only ten months old, Korra remembers the moment when she first bent fire.

It's a curious memory that she holds. For the longest time, she thought it was a dream, because while many children say they remember their earliest moments of life, they really don't. Korra certainly doesn't. She's been bending water and earth since before she can remember, but she doesn't remember learning how to bend them. Water and earth had come easily to her, just like fire did, but she doesn't have a moment she remembers where the knowledge just clicked. She woke up one morning and started bending. Both those instances of bending, according to her parents, happened within four days of her being put outside for more than a hour's length of time, water first then earth.

But fire.

Fire was different.

There's a feeling that Korra associates with fire. It is safety, it is comfort, it is a light in the dark. It's a kind of hope. It can burn everything into ashes but then it can also rejuvenate and create new life. She's always had a kind of fascination with the phoenixes of old, just for that reason.

Korra has never truly been cold in her life because she has a ball of fire sitting in the middle of her chest. Even growing up in the South Pole, she never felt cold. She had Naga at her back and a fire in her heart.

She remembers nothing of her infantile years except for bending fire.

She had been nearly ten months, and had yet to even show a sign of being able to waterbend. It was unlikely, considering her parents were both very skilled benders coming from prominent bending lineages in the tribe, but it had happened before. So imagine their shock coming into their home to find their baby girl engulfed in an orb of flame. Her parents had left her alone for not more than five minutes, or so they later swore, but they came back inside to find a giggling toddler sitting in middle of a large bubble of red and orange fire, burning so brightly and so hotly that it was melting the ice and creating a pool of water around her that was filling their home with steam.

Korra has heard this story many times, but every single time she hears it she flashes back to the recurring dream she had a child, of her being happy in a bubble of red, gold, and bronze. Nothing happened in the dream. She sat in the middle of a blur of bright, warm colors, everything else a haze as she was just happy. Korra has found that being happy is underrated; it's so hard to find happiness in life and then you lose it. She simply looks to her other grandmother, Katara, and see's the sadness in her eyes as she misses her other half. This dream of fire reminds Korra that it will never leave her, it will always be there. So long as she dreams, Korra will still be happy. It was always hardest to wake up from that particular dream, the cocoon of blankets that she favored sleep with twisted around her forming a makeshift orb. Her rooms, always kept extremely hot according to a waterbender's perspective, didn't help much. Or, maybe it was the fact that she had to go train.

But from that moment forward, her parents and her trainers/babysitters couldn't keep her away from fire. Even after she started bending water and earth, fire always attracted her first above all else.

It was hypnotizing, entrancing, beautiful. It danced, even when she didn't command it to. It was warm and safe and good. It was bright.

For her entire life, nothing could replace fire in its sheer brilliance.

Nobody could make her feel hotter than the fire in her soul.

Until…she met a firebender who was known for being cool under fire. He made her burn hotter and brighter than anything or anyone else. When she was with him, she felt bigger and better and brighter than the familiar fire that had been in her chest since the moment she was born.

Figures it would be a firebender that would finally catch her attention.

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_love, _

_Azaria.  
_


End file.
